Poultry eggs drop sharply because of pork?

(Baonghean.vn) - The sharp decrease in pork prices along with the "pig rescue" campaigns has also affected poultry eggs, which are falling sharply in price.

Mr. Vo Van Du in Dong Vinh Ward, Vinh City - owner of a chicken farm said: If the peak price of chicken eggs on the farm was 22,000 VND/dozen, now it is only 12-13,000 VND/dozen. The price has decreased but it is also very difficult to sell, we have thousands of eggs in stock. Currently, the farm has 5,000 laying hens, each day there are more than 4,000 eggs, if we sell all of them, we will earn nearly 5 million VND while the cost of feed is 4 million VND, not to mention the cost of labor, electricity and water...

“In 2013, I established a cooperative and my chicken farm was granted a quarantine certificate by the city’s Veterinary Department, ensuring food safety. In addition to importing to Metro and Big C supermarkets, the farm’s eggs are also sold to some factories in Nam Cam, restaurants and even to Laos. However, with prices falling at an unprecedented rate, we are suffering losses,” said Mr. Du.

The sharp drop in egg prices and difficulty in selling eggs has caused many farm owners to fall into difficulty. In the photo is the chicken farm of Mr. Vo Van Du's family in Dong Vinh, Vinh City. Photo by Thu Huyen

Not far away, the farm of Ms. Nguyen Thi Tuyet's family in Yen Giang block, Dong Vinh is in a similar situation. We arrived when she and her husband had just transported more than 8,000 eggs to the markets to find wholesale buyers. Ms. Tuyet said that her family has 3 chicken farms, including 7,000 reserve chickens and 7,000 laying hens. Every day, there are thousands of eggs, while the family has no warehouse to store them. If they are not sold in time, they will spoil in this hot weather, so even though the price is cheap, they have to sell them.

There needs to be a solution to issue safety certification for qualified products. Photo: Thu Huyen

Vinh City currently has a total flock of over 300,000 chickens, of which, Dong Vinh ward alone has about 9 chicken farms with over 10,000 laying hens. The current output of the farms is traditional markets in the province, restaurants, supermarkets and factories. Each cage requires an investment of 1.6 billion VND, even some cages cost 3 billion VND (like Mr. Thanh's household in Yen Due block), but with the sharp drop in prices and difficulty in consumption as it is now, many farm owners are in a difficult situation.

Although wholesale prices have dropped sharply, according to our survey, the retail price of eggs at traditional markets is still 2,500 VND/egg, double the import price. And not only chicken eggs, other types of poultry eggs such as duck eggs and quail eggs have also decreased.

Many farm owners are stockpiling large quantities of eggs. Photo: Thu Huyen

The reason, according to many farm owners, is that recently pork prices have dropped sharply, and consumers have turned to eating more pork, causing egg prices to drop sharply over the past month.

In addition, according to Mr. Nguyen Van Binh - Chairman of the Provincial Farm Economic Association, in addition to the reason that pork prices have decreased, poultry egg prices have also decreased following the market, there is also the reason that cheap smuggled goods from China have come in large quantities. On the consumer side, they also do not trust the quality of farm chicken eggs, many farms use floating animal feed.

"We have had many meetings with farm owners to discuss improving product quality but have not had the desired results. Therefore, the agricultural sector, veterinary agencies, and food safety and hygiene agencies need to step in to resolve difficulties, inspect, and issue product quality certificates to farms," ​​said Mr. Binh.

Viet Phuong